Recording Sacred Songs Pt 2

The last few weeks (months, actually) I've been working steadily with my friend Matthew Monticchio on our albums of sacred songs. We recently recorded our friend Dan Kirby on the song 'I Hunger and I Thirst' - text that Matt put to new music. A really great tune that we are excited to be able to share with you - if all goes according to plan, we'll be able to do that early in January. Until then, check out the video below for a short voice lesson from Matt. =)

New Recordings!

The recordings I did for 'Of Whales' are now finalized and mastered by my friend Mark Peteritas! Check out the Of Whales Myspace site to listen to the recordings! Feedback is ALWAYS welcome. =)

Recording Sacred Songs Pt 1

This past week I spent some time with my friend Matthew Monticchio. He came over and we worked on recording, mixing and trying new sounds for the collections of sacred songs we're working on. It was extremely productive on many levels. Here's some video of the process.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTO3E_eNC4U

Mixing Sacred Songs

Another thing I've been doing over the last few weeks that I've been home (besides running my sisters around and generally 'being dad' while my parents have been out of town) has been working on recording and mixing with my friend Matthew Monticchio. We're working on what has now become 2 albums of hymns and new songs done in a folky/indie/poppy way.
The album features a host of other musicians, like the Christmas albums of 2007 and 2008 that you can still find on iTunes. My friends Joy Ike and Brooke Annibale both sing (we recorded them when they came through on tour last month with Garrett Heath and myself) on a tune, and below you can watch as I eat lunch and mix the track that Joy sings on.

Recording 'Of Whales'

Originally this post was simply going to be called 'Recording of Whales', but I thought that might be misinterpreted. No, I didn't go on a whale-spotting venture, and I didn't record whales... though I wish I did, because that would have been cool and GreenPeace would have been all over it.

'Of Whales' is the name of Josey Shawgo's musical endeavors - he's a singer-songwriter who approached me through a friend about recording some of his songs. The songs have a distinct folky sound, kind of Bob Dylan meets M. Ward. It's been cool working with him and the friends he brought along to the session last weekend - below is a video of us getting guitar parts, drums, and a last vocal take.

Touring my studio

In case you are wondering what I have been doing with my time since I've been back in Lancaster, I have been trying to relax with a vengeance. And failing miserably, unfortunately. But I have high hopes.

I recently set up my parents' garage as a recording studio and put myself out on the market under a record company (Ring Records), which was precipitated by some local musicians who found me on MySpace and wanted me to record them. The company has existed for almost 3 years (since I started doing music), but has never had its own web presence, so I created a free Wordpress blog and got it up and running.

I've been working with 'Of Whales', who is recording 3 songs on a budget - two of which might be on his MySpace site in the very near future. For the moment, you can check out my studio below.

Reviews

A friend recently got in touch with me on Facebook, saying he ran across a review of my latest album (Breathe Deep) on The Phantom Tollbooth. Intrigued, I went looking for it and sure enough found it was posted on June 16th, 2009. Here's an excerpt from the review, and you can link to the full review HERE:
  "What makes this album, Breathe Deep, so good is Hiram's penmanship. He is a great songwriter/wordsmith. Combine that with the airy guitar-based folk of his musical style, it makes for an enjoyable listen... It is poetic, musical, and honest. Hiram has put together an excellent album full of hope you can sit down and contemplate your navel to, or just play for enjoyment." 4/5 stars! - Robert Boynton, The Phantom Tollbooth
I just ran a Google search for 'hiram ring breathe deep review' and found another great review HERE on Adequacy.net - excerpt below:
   "Ring’s debut record suggest that there’s no suffering or turmoil that can’t be at least neutralized a little bit through some inspirational six-string strumming and a dose of hopefulness... there’s a heartwarming sincerity to be found in his fragile tenor and in the percussive beating of the guitar... If you feel like your life is in the doldrums, Hiram Ring’s music can probably help dig you out... His music, like his faith, is all about finding and embracing the light that can come out of dark places." Adam Costa, Adequacy.net
At the moment I'm packing for Germany, where I'll be joining a team from my church in teaching conversational English to German highschoolers for three weeks. I'll be video blogging on my YouTube site, and will try to keep this blog updated as well. When I get back, work will continue on the Sacred Songs project I started with Matthew Monticchio - we're also working on updating a Pageant Music blog, and I'll let you know when we get that up and running.

New Recording Project

The other day Matthew Monticchio and I went out to our friend George Yellack's house to record some drums for songs we are working on for a new collection of sacred songs. We wrote some of the songs and re-worked old hymns for this project, much like our last two Christmas album projects. This album will be released again under Pageant Music, and features a bunch of local musicians (Cliff Lewis, Katie Becker, Claire Battle, myself, Matt, others to be named) in a folk/pop/indie vein. You can download a rough demo of one of our original tunes, 'Communion Hymn' HERE. I'll try to keep you updated on our progress - here's a short video of our journey to George's and what we did when we got there.

Vlog Day 42 - Mount Paran and Covenant College

Dr. Tilley is the current headmaster of Mount Paran Christian School. He was at Houghton College for a couple years while I was there, and is just a really great person - Mount Paran was glad to get him back, and Houghton was sad to see him go. I stopped by and visited him for lunch and got a tour of the building.
The 'new' building is a state-of-the-art performing and fine arts center that houses an incredible recording studio, the Murray Arts Center recording suite. Brent Maloney, the studio manager and also musician with the band The Saturn Project, showed us around. They are just beginning the process of making it accessible to the recording industry and teaching recording technology to students. It was pretty amazing.

I then took off for Lookout Mountain, where I'm visiting my friend Matt Brown at Covenant College. He's another musician, singer-songwriter who crafts some pretty stellar pop-folk tunes that are just a lot of fun, with the band Third Lobby.

Vlog Day 20 - Church and Josh Garrels

It was truly a sabbath today - I slept in a bit, attended Waxhaw Bible Church with my friends (where I said hi to a bunch of the kids from the JAARS youth group) and then relaxed the rest of the day. I read up on the book my friend Joshua in Harrisonburg gave me, called "Three Cups of Tea" about Greg Mortensen, a TCK from Tanzania who became a climber and then built schools all over the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Quite a good read.
Around 4pm I called Josh Garrels' house, since he lives in the area. Josh is a soft-spoken singer-songwriter who has played at Cornerstone a few times and has a decently large following for an independent musician. I met him when he played up in Lancaster, PA with my friend Katie Becker and know him as a solid believer. He invited me over, and our subsequent conversation confirmed my perceptions.
I rode my bike over and had coffee with Josh and his wife while their little daughter climbed around - Josh's wife grew up as a Wycliffe MK as well, and it turns out that I share a birthday with both her mom and Josh's mom. I wanted to hear the story of Josh's musical journey, and he obliged - telling me about his start and what his journey has been like. It was super-encouraging to hear about his path and his passion for the Gospel to extend from his songs. It turned into a great conversation about purpose and vocation, dreams and aspirations, and ultimately submitting to God's will and holding all of life with an open hand.
Afterwards Josh showed me his studio and guest room which was built into the top of the garage, in a separate building from the house. JG spent last week recording an EP for his friend Josh Rosen, and so they sequestered themselves in this space to get it done. I didn't do a great job with the camera work - it's kind of hard to see everything, but partly because I was so busy drinking it all in myself. The picture of Jerusalem on his desktop sparked a conversation about missions and I mentioned that I have the opportunity to help engineer a worship album for musicians in Spain in May-June. It turns out Josh knows a friend of mine from Indiana who is an MK from Spain but was with me in Tanzania with a Houghton College program. The world is a small place.

Vlog Day 13 - Greensboro

This morning it was still raining. We went to City Church and connected with the group of folks that meet in a theater downtown. A really neat service - Charlie preached and I played 'I Am Not a Thief'. We went out for Vietnamese food and then home for naps. I made a few phone calls and then went off to my next appointment.
Harvey Robinson is a really talented videographer in Greensboro. He does with video what I try to do with songs - tell stories. His framing and techniques are really good, and when I saw his work on monkeywhale.com I knew I wanted to be part of his latest (ongoing) project 'Harvey's Kitchen'.
What is Harvey's Kitchen? Exactly what it sounds like - he films (among other things) musicians playing music in his kitchen. So I brought my guitar, sat down in a chair in the middle of his kitchen, he set up his equipment and filmed as I played a song. It was really cool to meet him and Carolyn, and I can't wait to see what they do with the film!
For dinner I met up with Philip and Miriam - their family was with us in Ghana, and they both happen to be attending UNC Greensboro, so we had dinner and then they showed me around the campus. Tomorrow I head out to Charlotte.

Video Blog Installment 7 (pre-tour)

In this installment, I discover myself snowed in on Monday, sleep in, cook pancakes (you don't see me cook the pancakes, just mention having done so), visit the Post Office, and sing a song that I wrote a LOOOOng time ago. I head out tomorrow on tour... officially, for real.

Check out: Katie Becker - Firstborn

We just finished working on Katie Becker's EP Firstborn. For those of you who don't know, an EP is a collection of songs in which the total playing time of all the tracks is less than 45 minutes. Anything longer than 45 minutes is a full-length LP (long-play). Katie's EP has already received a great review from Ken Mueller, an avid music listener who works for WXPN. It has been really exciting to work on these songs. Katie is a gifted songwriter, arranger, musician and... singer. She has a unique approach to singing, emphasizing particular nuances of the text with movement and poise. Almost Bjork-like in her stylings. She is also a very grounded person. We got to know each other at church through working with the youth group and helping out with music, and I have spent many a meal and evening at her family's house. As one keenly interested in life and what is going on around her, Katie is a songwriter for a new era of concerned individuals trying to make their way in the world even while they lend a hand to those around them. Find Katie online at www.katiebeckermusic.com, visit her myspace site, befriend her, and try to make it to a show near you to pick up a physical copy of this disc. Better yet, set a show up for her near you. You can also find her 5-song EP on iTunes:

Recording and Math

I just started a new job, working for Math U See, which makes and ships math textbooks to people around the world - mainly homeschoolers. They have textbooks from basic math all the way up through Calculus. As I remember trying to teach myself Calc out of a public school textbook, it seems like they're on to something - especially the way they are able to teach these concepts using visual blocks. They've found the teaching methods to be so effective that some public school special-ed classes are adopting it as their curriculum. Pretty cool!
We've also been recording these past couple weeks, which has been really good. somewhat stressful, of course, but we've gotten a lot done on the project. I'm working with Matthew Monticchio, David Green, Katie Becker and a bunch more musicians and it's turning out pretty nicely. Hopefully this will be ready for release by Christmas.
I actually have to go record pretty soon (we've got some string players coming in for a session), so I'll cut this short even though I haven't mentioned Purple Door. I'll try to blog about that in the coming days.

For those who believe that bad Art exists

I've been back in the US for a couple weeks, and something I've been thinking about I wanted to get out here. Many of you know I'm a musician, and as an independent artist starting on my own I'm interested in the social implications of art. I've had some local recognition, wherever I play people like my music (no-one has told me lately that they dislike it, though when I was first starting to write and perform that wasn't the case), and I think over the years I've come to discern what makes a good song (music, content, etc), which is why I've become a bit of a producer of other people's music.
Being a producer and engineer for other people has required an understanding of the niceties of musical quality. Instruments have to be in tune, the mics have to be set up properly, and there has to be something of value in the song at hand. I use a certain set of criteria to judge that value - is the song musical, does it move people, is it emotive, do the words and the music add to each other rather than detracting...? I believe that music (and any Art, really) is intended for an audience, and if these elements don't exist within the song it will not be worthwhile to record it, because the song won't DO anything for anyone in a deeper way - it will just annoy them.
That being said, some songs do this better than others - and that's the real social implication of song. I want to write and record songs that last a long time precisely because each of the elements - the music, the lyrics, the instrumentation - fits together so perfectly that is strikes a chord of response within the listener as music is intended to. Which brings me to a final point about why quality is so relevant to any discussion about Art.
As an independent musician, I want people to listen to my music. If the music sucks, people won't listen. There's a lot of music out there that sucks, and it floods the market because people believe that "anyone can create, whether they have talent or not". Yeah, they can create - but it might not do much for their audience. I've discovered in trying to get my music out there that there are a lot of contests to help you get your music heard. Some of them have great prizes. I have begun to avoid contests, though, where your fans get to vote - I live in a small town, and despite a large email list I have discovered something scary: the hardest working musicians with the most fans don't always have the best music, but they often win the contest because the criteria for winning is based on how many people vote for them.
Which makes me wonder - does this mean that most people who listen to music don't have any discernment about the quality of the music they listen to? I don't think so. I'm sure if you talked to any music listener over a period of time you would find that they discard the crap and listen more often to certain musicians. However, in terms of winning a contest they would rather help someone they know than a better musician who they don't know - it becomes more a relational territory war than about the quality of the music. Those with the largest social networks win.
So when we talk about the 'democratization of the arts' we are talking about letting down the drawbridge for everyone to come in and vote, removing all criteria and ignoring social ties to the artists. Not a very fair representation of quality, I'd say. What would be really interesting is to find a group of people (say 1,000) who have no ties to any of the artists, who have a large variety of music they like and listen to, and who would vote simply on what they like in the new artists they are exposed to. That would be a worthy group of judges to submit music to.
But at the end of the day, I realize that I just have to create music, and as long as the people I live with enjoy it, that's all I really need. It would be nice to gain larger recognition, but that's just a question of time. Because time filters out the crap, and only worthwhile songs remain.

Walking on Ice

It's sad that I was only able to blog daily for about a month, but there has been a reason for it. Matt and I have been busy painting one of the apartments, and it's beginning to look a lot nicer. It's amazing what a coat of paint will do for a room! So a lot of the last few days have been pretty much the same.
In preparation for my leaving, however, we have been doing a few different things. Yesterday we went with Dave and Liv Marit to a craft show in Jondal, northwest of us toward Bergen. We traveled up the West side of the fjord to Utne, and then took the single-lane, old road over and through the mountains to Jondal. It was pretty scary in some parts, especially as we had to pull off several times to let big buses and other cars going the other direction pass by. We stopped to look at some old rock pictures (petroglyphs) from the beginning of the Christian era, though probably made before Christianity arrived in Norway. We did our best to interpret whatever story might have been displayed there.
In Jondal we wandered around the craft show and looked at various handmade work - a lot of great woodcarving and fabrics, as well as jewelry and painting. It reminded me of various craft shows I'd been to in the US. I managed to find a good Norwegian cheese cutter (my Mom made me promise to bring one back, since they are some of the best cheese slicers in the world), and Matt got a wooden toy for his daughter.
There was also music to listen to on the bandstand - the Hardanger Big Band was a highlight. We ran into Lajla Storli as well, a local folk musician, who together with her folk musician husband John Ole Morken recorded with Ove and I last week. Lajla's main instrument is Hardanger Fiddle, a particular type of violin that has four under-strings strung below the regular strings, which are tuned as sympathetic strings and resonate when the top strings are played. It has a really unique sound, one instrument that I've never heard before - it sounds like a couple violins at once. BUT it also means it can only play in certain keys, because of the harmonic resonance of the under-strings. It was really neat to record them - John Ole's main instruments are the viola and violin, and he just completed an album of Norwegian folk tunes, which sounds quite good. Here's a picture of Lajla recording with us last week. Some great musicians around here.
Before we left Jondal to go back home, we decided to drive up the mountain to the glacier, Folgefonn. This is the glacier that sits between Jondal and Odda, and on the Jondal side they have a summer ski center on the glacier. We drove up to 1200 meters (on a road much smaller and more windy than the one between Utne and Jondal), right to the edge of the glacier, and stood on the frozen snow at the end of June. Pretty crazy stuff! Matt, having grown up in Florida, was excited to be on so much snow. It was a pretty incredible experience!

Hammond Organ

I just got back from a recording session north of Tyssedal, in the farm country along the fjord. That's where Geir Aksnes stores his Hammond B3 Organ (dual manual) with its accompanying Leslie amp, a trademark sound of rock, blues and jazz from the 40s, 50s and 60s. It sits in a side room of the community building there, and we went in and set up on the stage.
The roads are very steep and narrow around here, and a helicopter was transporting building materials just outside the building. Ove told me that all the farms have hunting rights up on the steppe, and that they use helicopters to travel to their hunting cabins and also to take their game out and back down to their houses. So as we waited for the helicopter to finish, we set up the organ and my recording studio and got familiar with the songs.
Geir is an electrician, and when he got the Hammond organ it was in bad disrepair. He fixed it up himself many years ago, and has since used it all over Norway. He plays in several local bands and is an extremely skilled piano player and, obviously, organist. The crazy thing about the organ is that you have to know it pretty well. You have to be able to use your feet and hands to switch buttons and press dials at the same time as you are playing chords and the bassline on either the top or bottom manual (keyboard), which I assume means you are playing two different registers or tones, though I'm sure that's all configurable in multidimensional ways. Needless to say, it's not something I can do, and that's why Geir was there.
The two songs we worked on: Living Water and Voices. After a couple run-throughs and me explaining what I wanted, we were off to the races. We got some great takes that I'm looking forward to revealing in the final mix. This album is just getting better and better. =)

Sabbath Rest

Today being sunday, and having gotten a good night's sleep last night, I hung out at home and read and played music, listened to John Piper and did a slight bit of recording. I borrowed a friend's bass last week, and just now got around to recording it on a couple of songs - Play Switch (I wasn't happy with the tone of the earlier bass) and Ove's song I Will Hope Continually. I'm not sure I'll keep the bass on that second one.
You can see me in this picture playing the bass. I relocated my desk to the living room of the apartment, in preparation for Matt's coming this week, and I think the new location is pretty nice, actually. Gives it more of an office feel when I sit down at the computer.
The bass belongs to Jan Olav Andersson, and is pretty nice. It's an old Ibanez (they like the Japanese-made instruments around here) from the 70s - an Eagle bass. Has a nice growly attack and a smooth sound and feel. I recorded direct through the Mbox and am really liking the takes I got.
I also did some laundry, the dishes, and a few other things like nailing nails into a board so I have somewhere to put all my Uncle's keys other than in a pile. I also played around a bit with GarageBand. It's a pretty cool program, but as always I have issues with it. ONly because I dual-partitioned my hard drive, though. So I had to figure out the Mac OS X file structure and copy the files onto the second hard drive so Garageband could find the loops. I don't know why they don't just have an option in preferences that lets you select WHere to look for loops, rather than forcing you to copy the files on a dual-boot system. I think that was an issue they didn't think of though.
It just started raining, so after I post this I'll probably call it a night and crash early. Tomorrow's a busy day. I'd like to watch a DVD, but that means I'd have to change the DVD region on my player, and I'm not interested yet. I need to see if I can find a player online that lets you bypass the region. Though with Mac it might be a hardware lock...

A Bad Night's Sleep

Last night I went to bed around 11:30pm. Which is normal, given that the sun doesn't really go down until 1am. What isn't normal, though, is that I lay in bed until 5:30 am before I finally fell asleep. I don't know if I was just thinking a lot (sometimes my mind just spins incessantly, but maybe I was trying to process all the norwegian I had just learned) or I had eaten the wrong kind of food just before bed (spaghetti and hamburger meat in sauce), or it was just so warm (even though I had opened all the windows), or it was too noisy outside (cars revving their engines outside the apartment at 3am and kids yelling, not to mention the birds that started up a racket at about 4am when the sun rose), or what. Kind of strange.
Needless to say, I didn't feel all that well-rested when I got up at 10:30. I then went in to Odda to record some saxophone with Ove. That was fun, but tiring. Jazz sax - a little gospel feel for the one song, and then more pop-oriented for the other. It's been great to work with Ove as a co-producer, to give suggestions and help steer the ship, as it were. Perhaps not as much creative control, but after all, it's more his vision than mine. I think we got some great tracks today - now we only have three more that Ove wants other instruments on. We have the rest of this week to record, and then the schedule calls for mixing from then on. It's good to have deadlines sometimes.

Norwegian Wood 2

The other day Ove asked me to play a few songs in a concert that was happening in Tyssedal's church. The place he leads worship (Bedehuse) was sponsoring it. So yesterday and today we were busy setting up and playing. I borrowed the key to the church yesterday evening, and overnight I recorded some vocals in the sanctuary. It's a great place for vocals - natural reverb with the high ceilings and natural wood, but not too much bounce. Actually, the guitar tracks I recorded in there sounded pretty good too. Something about all the space, I guess.
Here's a shot of my recording stuff all set up in front (computer on the right), with the sound system up as well. I got some great takes. I was a little worried because earlier in the day, when we were setting up, I discovered a nest of birds just on the outside of the wall, in the eaves. Every now and then they would send up a chorus of 'cheep! cheep!' as the parent came with food. And it wasn't something you could predict, so I wasn't sure how that would go. Luckily, at night they were silent. Of course, night doesn't fall until midnight now, here in Norway. So I was recording from about 11:30 to 2:30. At least I can sleep in. Except for the sunlight coming through my window at 6am. But despite that I managed to stay in bed until 11 or so this morning.
But the concert went well, I thought - lots of people there, and most of them didn't speak much english. They listened well though, and seemed to appreciate the songs, especially the one I wrote in Nynorsk. I have my doubts about how much they understood of that song either, though, what with my accent and all. I've also learned that a lot of Norwegians don't understand Nynorsk anyway. It's like a strange dialect, and you have to study it to really know it. It's probably easier to understand than English, though.